2021 PES ISGT Tutorial Series: Mathematical Optimization in Active Power Distribution Systems Session 2: Applications (video)

This Multiple Session Tutorial: The proliferation of distributed energy resources and the deployment of advanced sensing and control technologies in electric power distribution systems calls for coordinated management of the grid’s resources. This has led to a growing interest in academia and industry alike on optimization methods for the large-scale unbalanced power distribution systems for improved operational efficiency and resilience. The current fast-paced research in this domain is driven by the challenging mathematical problem of three-phase optimal power flow (OPF). The goal of this tutorial is to introduce the state-of-the-art optimization methods applied to unbalanced power distribution systems and their use cases for the distribution systems applications. We will start with a discussion on the different models for formulating the distribution OPF problem and discuss their trade-offs. Next, we will describe the approach to formulate two distribution-level applications, Conservation Voltage Reduction (CVR) and DG-assisted feeder restoration, as an optimization problem. The application cases will include a hand-on tutorial on modeling the optimization problem using OpenDSS, Matlab/Python, Julia for the IEEE test systems.